A total of 141,000 Nigerians migrated to the United Kingdom (UK) between June 2022 and the year ending June 2023, latest figures published by the UK authorities showed.

Nigeria’s erratic academic calendar, characterised by frequent and protracted university strikes, economic woes and rising insecurity forced thousands of people to “japa,” a word in the Yoruba language that means “to flee.”

“In the year ending June 2023, the top five non-EU nationalities for immigration flows into the UK were: Indian (253,000), Nigerian (141,000), Chinese (89,000), Pakistani (55,000) and Ukrainian (35,000),” Office for National Statistics said on Tuesday.

Earlier in the year, the UK government announced changes to its immigration laws aimed at cutting its spiking net migration.

The new policy, which comes into effect from next January, includes a ban on family members accompanying foreign students for non-research postgraduate courses.

The restriction may force many Nigerians looking to move to the UK with their families to look elsewhere.

Nigerian nationals studying in the UK grew from 6,798 in 2017 to 59,053 as of December 2022, according to the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS), said earlier in the year.

As those numbers grew, so did the number of dependents: in 2019 there were 1,586 but last year there were 60,923.

ONS added that non-EU figures are based on Home Office Borders and Immigration data while EU figures are based on Registration and Population Interaction Database (RAPID) data received from the Department for Work and Pensions and HM Revenue and Customs and British nationals figures are based on the International Passenger Survey (IPS).

It further said that the provisional estimate of total long-term immigration for year ending (YE) June 2023 was 1.2 million while emigration was 508,000.

This simply means that net migration was 672,000; most people arriving to the UK in the YE June 2023 were non-EU nationals (968,000), followed by EU (129,000) and British (84,000).

According to ONS, net migration for YE June 2023 was 672,000, which is slightly higher compared with YE June 2022 (607,000) but down on its updated estimate for YE December 2022 (745,000).

It said it is too early to say if this is the start of a new downward trend, these more recent estimates indicate a slowing of immigration coupled with increasing emigration.

“Methods for measuring international migration are in development, and these timely estimates for year ending June 2023 and December 2022 are provisional, supported by assumptions that are informed by past behaviour,” ONS explained.

“This means the uncertainty associated with these estimates will reduce in our next releases, when we have more data to confirm people’s long-term migration status,” it added. (The Guardian)

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